She clutched whatever she had to her chest. Whatever dignity. She thought to herself. I cannot, do this. But she remembers what her mother had told her. You can, you can. She knocked on the door once, but backed away, out of the doorway, and leaning against the wall. She heard a door open, and then close. While the rain closed in on her, as she stuck out her tongue and let it fall. She could barely hold in the laugh. She took a deep breath and tried again. She knocked on the door slightly, and this time, waited for...
She told me never to open my mouth, never to talk. She said I am nothing, no one, and not even a mere object. But I did, I gave my self an excuse to talk, as I bulleted down Quincy Lane, and ran into the cemetery on North Boulevard. I walked over to the tombstone that represented what ever life I had. What ever excuse I had to be a happy person. For the next hour, my teardrops fell on the stone. And quietly, under my breath, I read the words engraved in the stone.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF TOM E....
Cuthbert was a fairly average Crocodile, with the expected number of teeth and glinting eyes like two marbles set in his swarthy head. He was not a particularly happy Crocodile though, as he was kept in a pen in a tourist attraction, where he was made to jump fifteen feet in the air to obtain his dinner, which was invariably a raw, plucked chicken on the end of a long pole. He found this predictable, boring and undignified.
So, one day, like any other. When the crowd gathered to watch his feat, cameras and phones poised to record him springing...
Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She shielded her eyes from the flashes of light that arced across the blackened sky, her face soaked with tears, her heart pounding in her chest as the cacophony of noise rattled her skull.
In London, a family huddled together in a corner of their living room, across from the window that had blown itself out from the force of the first impact. They held between them the grandmothers crucifix, praying to their God as if he could save them.
A man stood atop the Eifel...
The rain came pouring down upon me. And as I lay there, my cheap gown leeching its red dye into the gutter, I imagined my own blood joining it and just letting myself go away. I thought about it for a long, long time. The rain intensified. The thunder seemed to be synched to my thoughts and my sudden spasms of regret and anguish and misery.
It came down to making a choice. I would either stand up and walk on, or I wouldn't. I thought about how long it would take for me to perish in this place, knowing...
If I just write something, what if I reveal something unsavoury about myself?
What if I mess up the spelling?
What if I am under so much pressure to knock something out in six minutes that I don't write anything? A single blank page permanently appearing on my profile as a record of my inneptitude?
What if I write about something uncool, or unninteresting? First impressions count, after all. I'll be an outcast before I've even started.
Maybe I could just leave here and never come back. All this would be a brief, awkward memory. I could add it to...
- Ok, I'm going. Don't be late again!
Her voice pierced the steamy hot bathroom as I lay, half submerged, pondering the taps.
I don't reply.
Every morning it's the same. I sit here, enveloped in warm water and steam, my mind completely blank. But always, she invades my mind.
I wouldn't do it if it wasn't for her. I would lay here, topping up the bath with hot water as it grows tepid. Just blank.
Occassionally I think back to my childhood. As the hot water swirls in through the warm I am reminded of something my Mother always...
She stood there, covered in nothing but a crimson gown, shivering against the cold.
The rain fell down in a perfect arc around her, as the doorway spared her from the worst of the elements.
Glancing out, she caught my eye, and there was only one thing to do.
Or so I thought, but as I crossed the road, running to escape the never-ending sheetm with my coat over my head, I failed to see the bike that was heading, at speed, towards me.
A scream, a crumpling of flesh and metal and a release of the reason I crossed...
Elle courait dans le couloir comme le matin les joggers courent le long de la piste cyclable. C'était son entrainement quotidien. A défaut de joli chemin en plein air, le corridor était son stade. Et elle était rémunérée pour courir. Non pas pour faire la gloire de la Chine aux JO, non, mais pour faire circuler l'air dans cet immeuble-ville. Les mouvement d'air provoqué par ses déplacements assuraient en partie la ventilation de l'habitation. Elle fait partie cette génération remise au goût moderne des enfants des mines.
Une fois son jogging d'une heure effectué, elle pouvait vaquer à ses occupations...
Once upon a time I thought that I was a bird flying through the sky.
And then I realised that I'd just dreamt it. But once I realised that I was able to control my dreams, I decided to fly whenever it occurred to me that I was asleep. I would fly over my Grandma's house, I would start running as fast as I could and my arms would reach out beside me and I would just run up and up and up and there I was, able to fly anywhere. Able to see above all that was happening and...